


Down At Eddie's Bar

by gilligankane



Category: Glee
Genre: Alternate Universe, F/F, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-08-13
Updated: 2010-08-13
Packaged: 2017-11-17 07:45:40
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,756
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/549225
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gilligankane/pseuds/gilligankane
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"I'm the piano player down at Eddie's Bar / And Rachel is the waitress who wants to be a star..."</p>
            </blockquote>





	Down At Eddie's Bar

Quinn always starts the night with water, perched right at the edge of the piano top on a flimsy coaster that doesn’t absorb the sweat sliding down the side of the glass. She’ll switch to whiskey later on, when Rachel starts taking requests from the regular customers, like clockwork.  
Eddie’s bar has a routine down.  
  
Just after the nine o’clock hour, Rachel loosens up and moves through the patrons, serving them drinks and taking their song requests. Quinn signals to Puck behind the bar and he sends her a glass of whiskey, about three thumbs high that will last her the whole night. She sips it in between sets, her eyes following Rachel as the brunette spins between tables, dancing around the other waitresses, sometimes getting them to sing harmony behind her as they work.  
  
At nine thirty, Rachel will slump against the side of the piano, sliding onto the bench next to Quinn while she plays some nonsensical notes, and smile at her, taking the lower range and playing under Quinn’s higher register.  
  
Santana is always the one who pulls Rachel back off the bench and sends her out to the floor, rolling her eyes at Quinn, but smiling as soon as she shorter brunette has her back to the baby grand.  
  
They all have a soft spot for Rachel.  
  
“I’m going to be a star, you know,” Rachel will have said at least ten times before ten o’clock. “I’m going to get out of here and be a star.”  
  
By last call, she’ll have whispered it in Quinn’s ear more times than the blonde can count, and Quinn will have believed it every single time.  
  
Puck flashes the lights above the bar and the usuals – the only people who come to Eddie’s – shuffle out into the cool Lima night. Rachel will dump her tips on the top of the piano, smiling sadly at the five dollar bill Finn Hudson, the once golden boy of their small town, slipped her, again, because they both know he can’t afford to be giving her that much. She’ll count it out slowly, smoothing out each bill reverently, folding them in a wad and tucking them into her jean pocket.  
  
“This,” she declares, patting the slight, meager bulge in her pocket, “is going into my Los Angeles fund.”  
  
Brittany, another waitress Schuester hired when he really couldn’t afford to, sidles up next to Rachel, dropping her arm across the smaller girl’s shoulder, passing her another three singles. “That Israel guy stiffed you a tip again,” she says, like she says every night.  
  
They all know it’s a lie; Jacob Ben Israel is single-handedly supporting most of Rachel’s Los Angeles fund, but it’s Brittany’s way of helping Rachel out and the brunette smiles gratefully, like she does every night, and smiles at the taller blonde, wincing when Brittany turns and walks away, taking slow, steady, uneven steps between the tables.  
  
“I’m going to make it for her, too,” Rachel says quietly, more to herself than to Quinn, who doesn’t look away as Brittany limps back to the bar, leaning heavily on Santana, favoring her right leg.  
  
Eddie’s bar is where the dreamers of Lima, Ohio go to die.  
  
Puck was a wanna-be rock star, who picked up bartending to tide him over until his next paycheck; Mercedes could hold notes Quinn’s piano only dreamed about, but she doesn’t sing when she wipes down tables; Brittany danced through life on the tips of her toes and now she moves slowly behind the bar, cleaning glasses and keeping her limp from a car accident years ago concealed; Santana was a rising stock broker on Wall Street who flew back to take Brittany to New York with her and just never left; Tina, the girl who does a little of everything – fills in for Puck, buses tables, takes over when Quinn needs a cigarette break – except speak, was an actress once upon a time.  
  
Rachel is the only one who has come here to live.  
  
“That Abrams guy didn’t tip me, but he left a note for Tina. I still made a lot tonight.” she says excitedly, pushing down on C, D, E, F and forgetting the G, like she always does. “Pretty soon, I think. Pretty soon, you’ll be able to see my name in giant white lights.”  
  
Quinn hits the lonely, abandoned G, holding the note until the sound fades off.  
  
“Pretty soon,” Rachel repeats. “You know, I used to think I would get out of here right out of high school.”  
  
Quinn knows. She’s heard this story every night since the first night Rachel Berry walked through the door, eyes heavy and feet reluctant. Schuester knew who she was right away:  _in high school, he told her, she had the voice of an angel; she was going places_. Quinn finds it creepy that Schuester still haunts show choir competitions, but it’s not her place to tell him that he needs to let go of dreams after all these years. The brunette had sat at the corner seat for over an hour before she asked to speak to the man who ran the place, and by the end of the night she had a black apron and her first admirer.  
  
“Someday,” Quinn says vaguely, tapping at the keys but not really pushing on them. Matt and Mike, the bar backs who sling kegs out into the alley and haul the new stuff in, sweep quietly around them, ignoring what they say and the way Rachel drags her hand across the small of Quinn’s back.  
  
“Someday soon,” Rachel corrects quietly, her head pressed against Quinn’s shoulder, her ponytail brushing against Quinn’s ear. Her voice is even quieter when she says, “You can come with me.”  
  
Quinn plays E, F, E, F, E, F –  _Somewhere Over The Rainbow_  – and smiles a little sadly, a little humorlessly. “Send me a postcard,” she negotiates.  
  
Rachel is quiet for a moment, but turns her head after a while and kisses the underside of Quinn’s jaw, her mouth hovering there, panting hot air against Quinn’s skin until Quinn pulls back and slides off the bench seat, offering her hand to the brunette.  
  
“Want to come over?”  
  
Rachel used to say no. They used to sneak into the back room between sets and surges in customers, ignoring the leering looks Puck sent their way and the smirk Santana always had on her face. Quinn would kiss Rachel pressed against the old concert posters lining the storage room, one hand against the wall, covering a picture of one of Puck’s many bands he filtered through, the other buried in Rachel’s dark hair as Quinn tired to maximize the measly ten minutes they had before Tina’s stage fright flared up and she started stuttering.  
 _  
“I can’t start anything serious”_  Rachel used to say.  
  
Then it was,  _“Okay, but don’t think this is going to last forever.”_  
  
Now, Rachel takes her hand and smiles a little. “I’m going to get my bag.”  
  
Quinn closes the top of the piano and Rachel is at her side by the time she’s pushed the bench in, threading a hand around Quinn’s arm, and pulling her towards the door.  
  
At the corner before Quinn’s rundown apartment building, they nod their heads at Kurt, the boy who sits on the corner, waiting for something neither of them ever asks about. Rachel lets herself in with the key Quinn passes to her as they climb the steps, kicking her shoes off by the door and going for the fridge, pulling out the water she’d left there the night before.  
  
She slips in between Rachel and the door of the refrigerator, kissing the back of Rachel’s neck, pushing her towards the back room where Quinn sleeps on a mattress on the floor. Rachel leaves her Eddie’s uniform – a black shirt and black pants – on the floor at the foot of the mattress, clambering up onto the left side of the bed, her hair – near black in the low lighting of Quinn’s bedroom – spreading like a fan against the one pillow Quinn owns. Quinn crawls up after her, pressing her forehead against Rachel’s, staring into her eyes until the brunette blushes and glances away, catching sight of the neon lights flashing outside of Quinn’s window.  
  
It says  _Cheaters Lounge and Bar_  but Rachel whispers to Quinn, “It says my name, in lights” and that’s that.  
  
Quinn rolls over, Rachel’s body molding against her, and let’s Rachel ramble on about EGOTs and rising through the ashes of rejection to become an unstoppable force on Broadway.  
  
“Someday soon,” she says again. There’s a pause, like there always is, and Rachel’s words become whispers against the back of her neck. “Do you think I can make it there?” She doesn’t wait for an answer. “Do you think I’m pretty enough to be on stage with all of those performers? I’m good enough, aren’t I?”  
  
The blonde plays with Rachel’s fingers, twisting them gently and running her fingertip along the lines of Rachel’s knuckles, not sure how to answer any of those questions. “Send me a postcard,” Quinn repeats, thinking of her bare refrigerator, and how nice – how homey – it would look with a postcard of the beach, or the ‘Welcome to California’ sign. “With the sunset on it. Or something like that,” Quinn finishes quietly, “Whenever you get where you’re going.”  
  
There’s a strained silence before Rachel mouths the words against Quinn’s skin:  _You could come with me._  
  
Quinn pretends to be asleep, like she always does and in the morning, she stares at her fridge door, smiling half a too late after Rachel says something.  
  
That next night, Rachel steps up next to the piano – like she always does on the seventh of the month – wringing her hands regretfully and smiling cautiously at the daily crowd that shuffles in at the end of a long work day.  
  
“I’m going to New York,” she announces breathlessly.  
  
A few people clap; the number has dwindled since the first time Rachel said she was leaving.  
  
The first time, she lost her nerve.  
  
Her fourth attempt: her father’s needed her.  
  
When she was going to leave for the seventh time, she caught the flu.  
  
A time after that, she told Schuester he just couldn’t afford to lose her.  
  
She kept finding excuses not to go, even with her suitcase packed at by the door of Eddie’s and now, when she says it again, Quinn hardly stops playing some old Sinatra tunes, because she knows Rachel might have a ticket to New York, but she’s not getting on that plane.  
  
Rachel  _never_  gets on that plane.  
  
Quinn signals Tina to take over and slides along the bar, smiling softly at Brittany wiping down a glass absentmindedly, watching Santana deflect the advances of a drunk customer. Rachel is sitting against a wall in the back room, staring at a ticket in her hands.  
  
She looks up when Quinn closes the door, blinking back something in her eyes before she smiles unconvincingly.  
  
Something has come up, again.  
  
Rachel won’t get on that plane.  
  
“It’s a shame,” Rachel says quietly. “I thought this time would, you know, be the right time. But my Dad is sick and I really don’t think I could leave him now.”  
  
That’s a lie. Quinn ran into them yesterday before the bar opened and they were both smiling and healthy.   
  
Rachel shrugs a little and looks away as she continues. “And now there’s us.”  
 _  
Us_  – Rachel has never used that excuse before. The brunette looks up at her expectantly, her eyes a little shinier than before and her mouth is hanging open the slightest bit, taking short quick breaths as she waits to Quinn to tell her that she’s not wrong.  
  
There’s a weight immediately dropped onto Quinn’s shoulders and she feels like her whole body staggers under it. _Us_  is the reason this time, that Rachel is delaying her dreams and it crashes down so wearily on her that she thinks she might fall through the floor.  
  
Instead, she takes slow, heavy steps across the room and cups Rachel’s face, lifting it up to meet her eyes. She wants to say “ _you should go_ ” or “ _I’m not worth sticking around for_ ” but the determination in the brown eye staring back at her let her know that saying either of those things would be the wrong thing to do, because Rachel is hanging on by the last thread of whatever has been holding her together these past years.  
  
“Who’s going to send me a postcard,” she murmurs as she dips her head, meeting Rachel halfway.  
  
A tongue slides against her lips and her mouth opens, granting Rachel permission to kiss her, ignoring the liquid burn she feels against her cheeks, pressed to Rachel’s face. She ignores Rachel’s hands twisting her black shirt roughly and focuses on slowing down, on kissing Rachel like they have forever.  
  
Apparently, as of now, they actually  _do_  have forever.  
  
Quinn pushes against Rachel’s desperation, tempering the kiss until she can break away, panting, her forehead resting against Rachel’s while the other girl squeezes her eyes shut and grips Quinn’s waist, shuddering almost imperceptibly.  
  
It takes a couple of minutes – longer than the ten that Tina can withstand out at the piano, and she knows when she stops because the bar behind them is eerily quiet – but Rachel stops shaking and starts wiping at the bottom of her eyes, smiling a watery smile up Quinn as she readjusts her apron.  
  
“Guess I should tell everyone that I’m staying after all, huh?” she asks, probably rhetorically.  
  
Quinn answers anyway, combing her fingers through Rachel’s hair, tying it back into a ponytail. “Let them figure it out for themselves,” she says, because she’s sure most of them know anyway.  
  
She pushes through the swinging door, sending Puck a look they exchange far too often, in her opinion, and moves through the floor, gently directing Rachel towards the waitress’s station, where Santana nudges her in the shoulder.  
  
Quinn settles back behind the piano, nodding in the direction of the old woman who sits in the corner, muttering about world domination regularly and stops only when she think Quinn might play something by Sinatra. She stretches her hands across the keys, leaning back to take in Eddie’s – its dimly lit bar, its employees, its patrons. It’s the same thing every night, seven days a week, almost every week a year.  
  
Puck tips a clean glass at her; Mike and Matt lean against the bar, talking quietly; Santana lifts the hatch separating the bar from the floor and passes an order to Brittany, kissing her quickly enough so that she thinks no one notices; Tina slinks back into the corner, taking inventory and stealing glances at the Abrams guy who stares right back at her; Mercedes bustles between tables swiftly, sweeping dirty glasses into a tray; Kurt, the boy from the corner always searching for something no one else sees, presses his face against the front window, peering into the storefront; that boy Finn Hudson settles back in his chair and smiles to himself; Schuester comes out of his office to listen to her play  _”Fly Me To The Moon”_  one last time before closing.  
  
Rachel stands off to one side of the floor, taking it all in the same way Quinn is.  
  
She slides to one side of the bench and begins to play, slower and sadder than it should be.  
  
But that’s Eddie’s, where the has-beens and the wanna-bes and the once-weres end up when they can’t go anywhere else, sadder and slower than they ever were before.  
  
Rachel came here to live.  
  
The clock strikes nine and Santana slides a whiskey across the top of the piano, three thumbs full, and she sips it between sets. At nine thirty, the crowd is cheering Rachel on, cat-calling as she sits down next to Quinn, bumping her shoulder against the blonde’s.  
  
“Let’s play them something sweet,” she says, her palm sliding against Quinn’s thigh before resting on the piano keys, tapping, but not pressing, the notes she’s already playing in her head. She smiles at Quinn and turns her head, kissing her shirt-covered shoulder briefly behind the cover of the music stand. “I’ll have to know more than Sinatra when I’m a star, someday.”  
  
By last call, she’ll have whispered that – “ _someday, I’ll be a star_ ” – in Quinn’s ear more times than the blonde can count.  
  
Quinn will have believed it every single time.


End file.
